pepperland

29102008

- once upon a time, or maybe twice, there was a place called pepperland… that’s how one of the most unusual feature films ever produced began. YELLOW SUBMARINE – 1967. produced by GEORGE DUNNING’s british TV-CARTOONS studio. everything in this film is different, the story is completely crazy, the style of the characters and the settings are pop-art and never seen before, and the music of course – THE BEATLES, pop-music, never used in an animated feature film before.
I just had started my studies at the university and the film blew me away. HEINZ EDELMANN, a german top illustrator and designer was responsible for the look. you have to see it yourself. IT IS A MASTERPIECE. so unique with unusual visual ideas, crazy animation, perfect translation of the music into pictures. as far as I remember it changed everything at least in europe in the animation field. but as well in commercial art and illustration. and it opened the doors for a lot more musical adventures afterwards. one of them was PINK FLOYD’s – THE WALL. I will post some of that masterpiece later.
I only wanted to show you some of the atmosphere of YELLOW SUBMARINE in these few screen-captures. I guess somewhere a lot of that artwork still exists. so no need to restore some of it. and – I would not know where to start! what a movie!

Share this:

Like this:

Related

Actions

Information

4 responses

30102008

stephen perry(00:57:14) :

The opening seq of Liverpool with the sun rising behind the clock tower and the pan down and the chimneys shooting smoke into the air in sync with a siren. Was shot on Bob Godrey’s rostrum camera; a bit of useless information.

I forgot to say that the reason they used Bob’s rostrum camera; because it was the only unique rostrum that had inverted peg holes in the peg bars. Which meant one could take a standard peg bar normally taped to an animation disk and turn it up side down and hold artwork in place on the two inner peg bars on the rostrum table and use the two outer pegs at the sametime. On other rostrums the only way to use the inner peg bars and have cels on the outer pegs was to tape the artwork to the bars after removing the three pegs from each inner bar. It gave great flexability when panning four levels on Bob’s rostrum.

from hans
thank you, stephen, for the expalnation. it looks like you worked with the camera yourself. like me too. in the 70s and 80s I did all the camerawork myself. took me 6 months to figure out the triple dissolve technique that dick williams used in his commercials. I asked his cameraman ian, but he said, I should try to figure it out myself. well, thanks! it’s fascinating to look back, it feels like ancient times.

I remember watching this film when I was a kid (feel old now?). I still love the movie and the way it plays on the whole Peter Max style of the time. But honestly, can anyone make sense of the story? And yet I love it!

ABOUT ME

my name is hans bacher, – I work as production designer in the animation film industry. for the last 40 years I lived and worked in duesseldorf, london, paris, los angeles, manila and tokyo. now I am professor for film-design at the nanyang techn. university in singapore.